Jᴀᴄᴜʀᴜᴛᴜ - Tʜᴇ Cᴀsᴛ Oᴜᴛ

Freakzilla wrote:Senate and House leaders said Friday they will put off further action on online piracy legislation after a storm of protest over the measure.

http://news.yahoo.com/us-senate-chief-p ... 34234.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

lotek wrote:Another Golden Path of Words ?

lotek wrote:Good meds then ?

Mandy wrote:Anonymous is on the warpath.

...It may greatly increase the effectiveness of today's attacks, but it also renders them largely meaningless. Anonymous' previous attacks had what political power they had because they were acts of conscious protest; participants knew what they were getting into.

Even before it was shut down, Mega­upload had its legal troubles. It was in a fight with Universal Music because celebrity artists such as Jamie Smith, Kanye West, P. Diddy and Will.i.am endorsed the Web site. Some of those musicians had close connections to a leader of Mega­upload, Swizz Beatz, and his wife, Alicia Keys

Thank you for contacting me regarding S. 968, the "Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act of 2011 (PROTECT IP)," and H.R. 3261, the " Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA)." It is good to hear from you.



S. 968 was introduced on May 12, 2011, and referred to the Senate Judiciary Committee. On May 26, it was reported out of committee and placed on the general legislative calendar. If enacted, S. 968 would amend federal copyright law to authorize the Attorney General to file civil action against violators of copyright infringement law.



H.R. 3261 was introduced on October 26, 2011, and referred to the House Committee on the Judiciary. On December 16, it was considered before the full committee; however, the bill was not voted out for consideration by the full House. If enacted, H.R. 3261 would authorize the Attorney General to seek a court order against a U.S.-directed foreign Internet site committing or facilitating online piracy.



On January 23, 2012, a procedural vote on S. 968 was scheduled in the Senate; however, Majority Leader Reid announced that this vote will be postponed in order to allow for modifications to the bill to be made . Furthermore, House Judiciary Chairman Lamar Smith announced that further consideration of H.R. 3261 would be postponed indefinitely.



It was always clear that SOPA and PROTECT IP needed to be perfected, and that legitimate concerns needed to be addressed before these bills could move forward. Given this and my constituents concerns, it was always my intention to oppose moving forward until concerns had been addressed. With the majority leader's decision to postpone the cloture vote on the PROTECT IP Act originally scheduled for January 24, I withdrew my co-sponsorship to await the resolution of the outstanding issues.



I believe that online theft is a serious issue, and that Congress needs to make certain that our laws adequately protect the interests of rights holders. When $58 billion in economic output is lost to the U.S. economy annually due to copyright theft of movies, music, packaged software and video games, and about one-quarter of all internet traffic is copyright infringing, there is a real problem that needs to be addressed. I have complete faith that we will be able to work out a compromise in the future that addresses this, while still promoting free and open access to the internet. Should a bill addressing this topic come before the full Senate for consideration, I will keep your thoughts in mind.

lotek wrote:Thanks for that kind of insight, do you mind if I share it ?

Sleepwalking into censorship: Pirate Bay faces UK web block

Summary: A UK court has effectively ruled file-sharing site The Pirate Bay as illegal, paving the way for ISP-level blocks to be enacted when a final judgement is made in June.

Swedish file-sharing site The Pirate Bay could be blocked from the UK population after the High Court in London ruled that the site breaches copyright on a massive scale.

The move brings a block on the site to British residents one step closer.

In a judgement today, Mr. Justice Arnold who presided over the case, said that The Pirate Bay — and its users — infringe copyrighted content.

Music and film lobbying groups are now pushing for UK broadband providers to block the site. A ruling is expected in June as to whether ISPs should prevent its users from accessing the site.

...

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/london/sleepw ... block/3171" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Phone and email records to be stored in new spy plan

Details of every phone call and text message, email traffic and websites visited online are to be stored in a series of vast databases under new Government anti-terror plans.

Landline and mobile phone companies and broadband providers will be ordered to store the data for a year and make it available to the security services under the scheme.

The databases would not record the contents of calls, texts or emails but the numbers or email addresses of who they are sent and received by.

For the first time, the security services will have widespread access to information about who has been communicating with each other on social networking sites such as Facebook.

Direct messages between subscribers to websites such as Twitter would also be stored, as well as communications between players in online video games.

The Home Office is understood to have begun negotiations with internet companies in the last two months over the plan, which could be officially announced as early as May.

...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/i ... -plan.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

lotek wrote:yeah I've sen that last one...
They even talk about storing communications between players in online video games.
Really ?